Alexa, Play Me Howard Stern

Sirius XM radio is now available on Amazon Alexa. The addition of the satellite radio service, long a missing piece in Alexa's streaming music offering, means you can finally listen to the Yacht Rock station (highly recommended FYI) by hollering at a speaker in your kitchen.

It's the latest shot in the, uh, speaker wars. It comes shortly after Apple announced its own voice-controlled home speaker, the HomePod. Apple emphasized the HomePod's audio performance, suggesting that audiophiles would prefer its speaker over that of the Amazon Echo or Google Home.

But there's a lot more to audio than just the way it sounds, right? Adding a big radio partner like Sirius XM makes the Echo more than just a weather and Tide-refill ordering machine. It's something to listen to. Amazon really hit 'em with the Hein, you might say.

Sirius XM subscribers (sorry, you have to be a paying customer still) can now say “Alexa play me Howard Stern on Sirius XM” or “Alexa play me Tom Petty Radio on Sirius XM,” instead of tuning to those channels in their cars, or wherever. Convenient!

But one thing they WON'T be saying is “Alexa play me Classic College on Sirius XM,” because Sirius XM got rid of THE BEST STATION EVER.

Imagine this: a station that was just indie rock from, like, 1987-1999.

It was basically all Pavement with an occasional Dinosaur Jr. or Liz Phair break. It was great. Unfortunately, Sirius canceled the station in 2015.

What I'm saying here is that if you're a Sirius XM subscriber with an Echo, please say “Alexa, please mail a letter to Sirius Radio telling them to bring back Classic College.” I'm pretty sure that's how it works?